High School Summer Internships, Projects, etc.

Applying to College
1

Hi everyone! I am in my junior year of high school. I hold a 4.2 weighted GPA and 1920 SAT score. I have competed on the cross country and track & field teams at my school for 6 varsity seasons so far. I am interested in pursuing a career in engineering, and I currently have particular interests in mechanical or aerospace engineering. I aspire to attend UCSB, UCD, or Cal Poly SLO, and I will be applying to all of them in the next application season.

Over the summer, I am considering in engaging in some sort of engineering internship or project. How much more favorable are students with work experience? I have been struggling to find an internship over the past few months. Do personal projects improve a student’s college application? For example, a senior at my school did an electric car conversion as an individual project. A project like this would be out of my budget, but do personal projects play any factor in the college application?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any suggestions for internships, summer programs, or projects I could do to improve my candidacy for college, that would be great. I would really like a summer internship with an engineering company, but they are difficult to find for high school students. Advice on acquiring an internship would be much appreciated, though I know it is getting a little late to find one. Whether or not it improves my application, I will still be pursuing a summer engineering endeavor.

2

You may want to improve your SAT greatly, as it will be tough with your score right now as it is to get accepted into those schools you listed.

Anything that you do as a student/spend time on will and should factor into the college application. That is, if you choose to put it on the app.

One method is to contact engineering professors in colleges and ask whether or not you can work in their lab in the summer. Otherwise, it is very hard to find an internship at a company as a high school student. Do you have any family connections perhaps? Also, community service like Habitat for Humanity (which is kind of related to engineering) may also be a choice.

The most important thing is to do a project that you truly enjoy and may want to write about in the college essays.
Your ethnicity and gender may also help or hurt your chances. Are you a cali resident?

Hope this helps.